Wordle game jam transforms the daily puzzle into spells, prophecies, and more

polygon.com:

Matthew R.F. Balousek thinks about Wordle the same way he does dice. The Hostos College lecturer tells his student to consider a game tool’s affordances — all the things it can do — and then strike from that list everything they have seen used in a game. Dice can be rolled to show a number, sure. But they can also be stacked, spun, aligned, and hucked across the room.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Wordle, the browser-based word game phenomenon created by Josh Wardle (who recently sold it to the New York Times), stuck in Balousek’s creative craw long enough that he created an impressive collection of game design musings before realizing he needed to just sit down and make his own game. Not content with toiling away by his lonesome, he decided to host The Wordle Jam and invite anyone else possessed with the five-letter spirit.

For those who have somehow completely missed the quaint zeitgeist that is Wordle, here’s a brief rundown: players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word by inputting letters into a grid. Correct but misplaced letters will show up as yellow, while spot-on placements show up green. Everything else is grayed out on the grid as well as the keyboard. The smartest part is its ability to be shared on social media in what Balousek calls “the mosaic,” which has become the conversation opener du jour in group chats, Discord servers, and Twitter threads. But it’s also given designers new and old pause, with many surprised by its virality as well as its simplicity.

And therein lies the inspiration for The Wordle Jam.

“I think any time there’s a non-zero number of things being made, that’s it. That’s the whole ball game,” Balousek told Polygon in an interview. All the niche movement needed was a name,